CHAPTER 187 – MOSTLY GARDENING 

Jacob had figured out that the Earthy Knightly Fruit main problem was the lack of a rapid growth. It would take at least a week before they could grow it inside the Alchemical Garden. However, even if they did expand the place to ten times its current size, they had too many mouths to feed.

While Jacob was sure he could start growing some crops outside St. Peter after laying down the right Formations, he preferred going for the more ambitious plan. If he could really pull the Alchemic Food diet, St. Peter would have an edge no other city would ever be able to replicate.

And thanks to his great knowledge of Alchemy, Jacob was sure he was going to make it. It would be hard, sure. But what was he supposed to do?

His cultivation was already starting to stagnate again. He could feel the natural barrier of his own talent while he tried to push for the latest levels of the Cockroach Realm.

So, he had decided he would put his Alchemical knowledge to use and create a super-potato!

And not just that!

He had big plans for the ingredients that were used to make the Alchemic Tagliatelle too. He was planning a version of those that would be effective in raising people's cultivations up to the peak of the Oriole Realm. And given the particular gentle nature of Alchemic Food, he could feed as much as he wanted to the people in St. Peter without having to worry about impurities.

He took a last long look at the Earthy Knightly Fruit before he got to work.

He had to crossbreed the potato-looking Spiritual Root with another two roots that were both more powerful and grew faster. The end result would be have a great unbalance in its properties and it would definitely be impossible to make a Pill out of it.

But that wasn't what Jacob was looking forward to make.

In fact, he wanted to make a great something he could both make Gnocchi from and that he could feed to the Demonic Boars. If he could raise the average level of the Demonic Boars to the Mantis Realm, he would be able to feed St. Peter's people the equivalent of a strong Pill at every meal!

He was also working on a secret recipe, but he knew that we was going to wait to find another Demonic Beast that he had yet to spot anywhere near St. Peter.

But it didn't matter how long it would take, Jacob was ready to do anything to recreate all the most powerful Italian recipes!

He took a Honey Marrow Flower, a special flower that grew up to 1.2 meters tall; it had grey-green stems that grew in triplets and formed a perfect triangle. A single flower was 40 cm wide and 10 cm deep. In its deepest part it secreted a special nectar that could be used both as a reagent and food. Many Demonic Beasts loved the nectar, the so-called Honey Marrow, so much that they would be very careful in not destroying the main flower.

It had a strong and fruity scent with a deep sweet note to it.

The most prominent quality of the flowers was how easy it was for them to grow and how fast they grew. It took time for them to start secreting the Honey Marrow, but since many Demonic Beasts actively protected such flowers, it wasn't that rare to meet them in the wilderness.

Jacob was going to use his Qi to graft parts of its properties to the Earthy Knightly Fruit.

Even though the Earthy Knightly Fruit was a Root, it shared some fundamental properties in its energy with the Honey Marrow Flower.

They both had a very lively personality. Jacob didn't have better words to describe how the two plants felt to him. It was an Alchemist perception of how seemingly different ingredients might mix together.

There were many theories on how such compatibility worked, with some saying that Spiritual Herbs of any kind, whether Roots or Flowers, had Affinities in the same way people did.

So, following that theory, even though the two plants seemed very different, they shared a very similar affinity and Jacob was sure he could crossbreed them well enough to obtain the perfect breed he needed.

Sadly, that was not the hard part.

Jacob was going to crossbreed the Earthy Knightly Fruit not just with the Honey Marrow Flower, but with another root as well.

The Black-Speckled Tree grew the homonymous Black-Speckled Root. And while this tree took a very long time to mature to its full form, it had an incredible energy-storing capacity. It could probably store twenty-times what the average plant could.

Normally, trying the crossbreed he was going for would result in something completely unusable for Pills, as previously mentioned. That was because Pills were a fierce product capable of ravaging someone's body. Even though Jacob had swallowed a myriad of Pills while ignoring their side-effects thanks to the Time Domination Cultivation Technique, right now such Pills would not benefit him; and no one else would be able to ingest them and stay unscathed.

But if he managed to make a new breed to make Gnocchi out of all these Spiritual Herbs, he would bring the Alchemic Food path to new heights.